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New technology moves small businesses forward and protects customers from fraud

By Pat Moran

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The process of completing a credit card transaction has become an ingrained part of our business culture. Since the 1970s, when the emergence of magnetic strip credit cards revolutionized how we purchase goods and services, electronic payments have become simpler and more accessible, opening up new business opportunities and attracting new customers while decreasing the burdens and losses businesses face when depending on cash and paper checks.

As payment technology advances, criminals continually develop new ways to attack secure payment systems. However, payment technology providers and businesses will soon be introducing a new generation of credit cards in the United States that will significantly reduce fraud by making it nearly impossible to create counterfeit cards. Commonly referred to as an EMV chip card, this new payment technology uses embedded smart chips that encrypt, or tokenize, customers’ data differently for each transaction. This means that criminals can’t capture valid information to pose as a customer and complete an unauthorized purchase.

For this new system to work, and to ensure business owners protect themselves and their customers, businesses will need to upgrade the equipment they use for processing card payments with new EMV point-of-sale terminals. These new smart card systems cost between $200 and $1,500 per unit and can be a major expense for many small businesses.

Early indications are that processors will offer a variety of incentives, costs, and plans for these new terminals. Some may include free and discounted terminals as part of a larger package of services, while some will charge market rates and price other services at a relative discount. Business owners will be well served to explore the offers available in their area and compare notes with peers before locking in an agreement. However, if owners plan ahead, the security and long-term health of their businesses, as well as the ability to maintain consumer confidence, far outweigh the cost.

The 2012 National Cyber Security Alliance’s National Small Business Study found that if a small business’s system is hacked, there is a 60% chance that business will close within the next six months due to a loss of consumer confidence. These types of data breaches are happening more often with small businesses, as large retailers have generally upgraded their basic security and criminals have turned to trolling for default passwords and unsecured servers among local establishments. Symantec, an information security firm, detected a 300% rise in these attacks between 2011 and 2013, and predicts they will continue to grow without a change in technology.

EMV is not a cutting edge technology. It is about 15 years old and was created in Europe due to unreliable telecommunications networks. There was never a business case in the U.S. for implementation of EMV due to our reliable telecom.

Although EMV helps address counterfeit credit card and lost/stolen credit card use (card present environments), it does nothing to secure e-commerce (card not present environment). This is why we always see card not present fraud balloon in countries where EMV is deployed.

There are more current technologies available such as Host Card Emulation (HCE), created by google, that may provide more and better security than EMV for both environments.

The latest initiative that EMV received was mostly a knee jerk reaction to recent large retailer breaches. However, EMV would not prevent these hacks, prevent theft of card data, or prevent ensuing fraud although it may change it to online fraud.

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